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Interworld Survey Ship 2334 (Nebraska)

Commander Carol Mayer was not happy. Sure the company had given her a brand new Survey ship but then had the gall to tell her names were not allowed. "To hell with that" she said to herself. She would name it "Nebraska" after her childhood home and if Interworld Inc didn't like that well they could go straight to hell...

Oh boy..Now I KNOW I'm in trouble.. After doing the map for this month's challenge I just HAD to try and draw Mayer's ship. Now I'm no artist but all in all it's not bad. Blocky and functional just the way I would imagine a huge multi planet conglomeration ship to look. Deckplans to follow..as always feedback is requested and appreciated as I try to expand my experience.. Thanks !!

Last edited by jtougas; 12-15-2010 at 02:06 PM.

I am the breath of Dragons...The Song of Mountains...The Stories of Rivers....The Heart of Cities.... I am A Cartographer....

This kind of view, whether perspective or isometric, is challenging. If I have time later today, I'll work up a brief tutorial that I learned from a concept artist who does a lot of cars. It should be easily applicable to a ship of this type.

Well I discovered Sketch-up today and of course I had to try it..Now this is just me playing around with getting things looking "spaceshippy" and I'm sure the Nebraska will go through many more iterations before I call it done.. (Sorry Carol.. ) at least with Sketch-up I won't have the perspective problem although thanks to Midgardsormr's EXCELLENT tutorial I think I can tackle that now too.. as always feedback is requested and appreciated.. Thanks!!

I am the breath of Dragons...The Song of Mountains...The Stories of Rivers....The Heart of Cities.... I am A Cartographer....

It's a little involved, and I'm pretty sure you can't get an ambient occlusion map out of Sketchup, but the techniques to get grunge and scratches are superb, and they should work just fine in Gimp.

There was also a tutorial on painting hull plating posted here a while back, I think in another Sketchup thread, but I don't feel like digging it up at the moment. Seems like RobA posted it, but my memory fails me.

Well thanks to Midgardsormrs excellent tutorial I HAD to try to hand draw this thing. Now as you can see I'm no artist so now the trick is to try to replicate this in Sketchup. And because the drawing is so bad I offer a story to make it just a bit better....

Parker Northrup stood in his office looking down across the city he had built. It was magnificent clean and sparkling nothing like the crumbling disease ridden hulk that had once stood here. It took men like Northrup men who were willing to make the tough choices the choices that no one else wanted to make. All this he told himself daily. He was the CEO of the worlds biggest energy company. He had drilled and dug and strip mined his way to the top and now he was about to unveil a whole new type of exploratory vessel. One that could travel out of the solar system to find resources that were so badly needed. The government's scientists may have discovered faster than light travel but he was about to make it profitable....

I am the breath of Dragons...The Song of Mountains...The Stories of Rivers....The Heart of Cities.... I am A Cartographer....

Not too shabby. You've got most of the perspective issues under control, and I suspect the remainder are just pen control issues (much like mine). Are you using the Pencil tool for your lines or a brush? The lines are aliased, which is usually caused by the Pencil.